Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/565

Rh It was one of the severest climbs that Whymper ever had in his career, full of peril and physical suffering. The party reached the summit by the glacier of the Ancula. Bead again Whymper's description of this glacier:

A few days afterward he climbed the Aiguille VeTte, a considerable feat in itself, though "Whymper, in his modesty, makes little of it. This was the first of the great Chamonix Aiguilles to be ascended.

It was not until his eighth attempt on the 13th of July, 1865, that Whymper finally attained the summit of the Matterhorn. He left Zermatt at 5:30 in the morning with three guides, Michel-Auguste Croz, whom Whymper loved as a brother, old Peter and young Peter Taugwalder, Lord Francis Douglas, the Rev. Charles Hudson and Mr. Hadow, a young man of nineteen. After long study, Whymper had rejected the usual route up the Matterhorn by the southwest or Italian ridge. Professor John Tyndall and he, in their fruitless emulation of each other, had stuck to this traditional route. Mr. Whymper now determined to try the eastern face, convinced, as he says, that its almost perpendicular appearance from Zermatt was an optical illusion and that the dip of the strata, which on the Italian side formed a continuous series of over-hangs—"ghastly precipices"—on the opposite side would become a great natural staircase with steps inclining inward. This apparently trivial deduction was the key to the ascent of the Matterhorn, and this route has since become the usual one.

All readers of adventure are familiar with this ascent. Sleeping over-night on the mountain, they reached the summit, with severe rockwork just before the finish. On the descent, however, came what is perhaps the most sensational accident, everything considered, in the history of mountain climbing. Let us quote Whymper's own words:

A few minutes later (that is, just after the descent was undertaken) a sharp-eyed lad ran into the Monte Rosa Hotel (at Zermatt), saying that he had seen an avalanche fall from the summit of the Matterhorn on to the Matterhorngletscher. The boy was reproved for telling idle stories: he was right, nevertheless, and this was what he saw. Michel Croz had laid aside his axe, and in order to give Mr. Hadow greater security was absolutely taking hold of his legs and putting his feet, one by one, into their proper positions. As far as I know, no one was actually descending. I can not speak with certainty, because the two leading men were partially hidden from my sight by an intervening